Traditional Class and Other Things

Tuesday night we had a "traditional" training session. Right down to everyone on their knees sweeping down the mat before class. I really liked it. Kicks are so much easier (yet challenging at the same time) when you have a real live body to aim at. Blocks have so much more snap and power when they are actually blocking punches. We did progressive jodan, chudan, and gedan uke. We did progressive shuto uke and backward progressive (would that be considered regressive?) shuto uke. We did progressive mae geri, mawashi gerri, and yoku geri. And the brown and black belts even did progressive jump kicks (tobi geri). And I didn't fall flat on my face. My biggest problem with the progressives was my mawatte - I don't know if I was over-stepping or under-stepping or what, but I always seemed to need to jump-switch. I really would like to do these "traditional" classes more often. Once a month would be nice to start off with.

In the category of "Other Things" for this post, I tested for my next rank after class Tuesday night and am now, as you can see from the graphic above the blog entries on this page, a FIRST KYU! Yikes!!! How did that happen?

The next 4 months are all about building endurance. It would be rather embarrassing to throw up all over the mat during the black belt test.